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The latest season of Celebrity Traitors begins with Claudia Winkleman emerging from a coffin and sets a playful, theatrical tone. Ross Kemp, James Blunt and Joanne McNally stand out among the celebrity contestants as paranoia, comedy and strategic potential shape the Highland competition.
The tone for the latest season of Celebrity Traitors is set early on as Claudia Winkleman springs, fully formed, from a casket and adjusts her fringe.
“I was in a church with Ross Kemp and Jerry Hall and then Claudia Winkleman climbed out of a coffin,” gasps a suitably gobsmacked Joe Lycett – one of 21 famous types assembled for another game of back-stabbing in the Scottish Highlands. We need a good Celeb Traitors because it had started to feel that the air was going out of the sadistic social deduction franchise, with the latest series of The Traitors Ireland wending its way to an anticlimactic conclusion.
But then Celeb Traitors on the BBC has always been a different beast – partly because of all the big, famous egos barrelling around but, just as crucially, because of the camp superpowers Winkleman brings as host. She really is a one-person kitsch extravaganza – all the more so for appearing to put absolutely no effort into anything she does, but is all the more riotous for it. This year’s celebs, meanwhile, are a riot.
Ross Kemp is an immediate standout for his off-the-charts paranoia; the dome-headed hard-man documentarian has already flipped his wig twice after benign interactions with fellow contestants lead him to instantly conclude he’d been selected for a sneaky “in plain sight” kill. There is also comic potential aplenty from James Blunt, posh as anything and reporting for duty dressed like a 12-year-old about to make their First Confession in small-town Ireland in 1986 – complete with beige jacket and a tie-knot larger than his royalties cheque for You’re Beautiful.
There is always that inevitable Irish contestant on British reality shows, and here that box is ticked by comedian Joanne McNally, who says her strategy is to give the impression of “performative stupidity”. She largely keeps her head down in part one and could be a potential dark horse as the action picks up. She seems to be enjoying herself but already there are signs that other celebs have become overwrought by the tension.
That this game is being played for real was confirmed by the news that comedian James Acaster became so distraught during one scene that fellow contestants asked for the cameras to stop so he could have a moment. There is a general sense that things could careen out of control at any moment – a suspicion further amplified by the bizarre choice for Traitors.
First up is Maya Jama, a Love Island presenter and someone who seems to genuinely struggle with the thought of randomly offing another contestant. She is thoroughly eclipsed, however, by luvvy supreme Richard E Grant, who comes down with temporary insanity and reveals he is indeed a Traitor and then spends the rest of the episode back-pedalling. There is one final twist as the Traitors select two Faithfuls for a late-night assignation. The task is straightforward.
They must choose one Faithful to join their conspiracy and the other to exit the contest. Desperate to cover Grant’s trail, they picked the two most vocally suspicious colleagues, comedian Acaster and journalist Amol Rajan. Acaster and Rajan are invited to plead for their lives – but we won’t know who is for the chop until Friday.
Never mind – Celebrity Traitors has already come roaring out of the traps and reduced the ho-hum Traitors Ireland to nothing more than a bad memory.
Celebrity Traitors Claudia Winkleman Ross Kemp James Blunt Reality Television
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